PCCTS was developed within the School of Electrical Engineering at
Purdue University to be a PUBLIC DOMAIN tool for constructing various
prototype and specialized compilers. After using the system for over a
year, we decided that it was mature enough to warrant release to a FEW
test sites. Hence, in Spring 1990, an experimental version of the system,
known as Beta PCCTS, was made available via anonymous ftp. Although the
system was only announced via two short postings in network newsgroups, by
January 1991, there were over 450 known user sites worldwide - and we were
hopelessly behind in responding to requests for hardcopy manuals.

After many improvements to both PCCTS and our distribution method, we
are finally ready for a full release of version 1.00 PCCTS. Among the
PCCTS improvements are things like LL(k) parsing, automatic abstract
syntax tree construction, etc. Instead of distributing hard-copy manuals
from Purdue, the full manual for the system has been published in ACM
SIGPLAN Notices (Vol 27, No 2, Feb 1992, pp. 88-165). In addition, the
ftp source distribution has been augmented by an automated email server,
pccts@ecn.purdue.edu.

Use of the email server

Distribution of PCCTS is managed by an email server that reads the
Subject: line of each email sent to pccts@ecn.purdue.edu. A missing or
undecipherable Subject: line will cause the system to reply with email
explaining how to use the server.

Overview

In many ways, PCCTS is similar to a highly integrated version of YACC
and LEX. However, PCCTS has many additional features which make it easier
to use for a wide range of translation problems.

In the near future, expect PCCTS to incorporate facilities for
automating optimization/parallelization and code generation, as well as
support for conditional predicates on productions. More compilers written
using PCCTS will also be distributed, although probably not by the PCCTS
email server.

Disclaimer

PCCTS was developed within the School of Electrical Engineering at
Purdue University, supported in part by NSF award number 8624385A3-CDR.
As a public domain software release, Purdue University and the authors
provide the system strictly on an "as-is" basis, without warranty or
liability. Despite this, bug reports and fixes are welcome. A facility
for sending questions and comments to the authors is provided via the
email server.
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